Yumi Kendall:

Hello everyone, I'm Yumi Kendall.

Joseph Conyers:

And I'm Joseph Conyers.

Yumi Kendall:

And welcome to Tacet No More, a podcast where we are no longer silent, asking the questions that need to be asked and saying the things that need to be said about classical music.

Joseph Conyers:

Tacet No More is an optimist's playground and landing pad for positive discussions about our belief in the power of music to better humanity. And we will invite voices from all sectors to inspire us in the work we do on and off the stage.

Yumi Kendall:

Joe and I have been friends for nearly 25 years and have over 40 years between us as professional musicians. We've had the best of conversations. Would you join us?

Yumi Kendall:

Here we go.

Joseph Conyers:

All right.

Yumi Kendall:

Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. This is a live recording of our podcast, Tacet No More. And it's a podcast that Joe and I started last year. And we are creating this space for all of us today because we believe passionately in paving the way and creating opportunities for the next generation of musicians and that is you. For the next generation of teachers, of folks who love music, whatever your interaction with music may be. We love what we do and we love the world we live in and we want to help make it grow. And so thank you for being here, for being a part of this conversation. Yeah, but before we do all of that, a huge thank you to the Suzuki Association of the Americas and to the American String Teachers Association for co-hosting this whole conference, a huge shout out to SAA and ASTA. And let's see, I guess we should briefly introduce ourselves.

Joseph Conyers:

Sounds like a plan.

Yumi Kendall:

OK.

Joseph Conyers:

Hello, everyone. I'm Joseph Conyers. On a daily basis, I do my very best to try to play the double bass. It is how I make a living. I'm principal bass with Philadelphia Orchestra. I teach at the Juilliard School. I am the music director of the All City Program, which are the top performing high school students of the School District of Philadelphia. A wonderful and long partnership with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute as an alum, and as someone who cares very deeply about that program. And what am I missing? Oh, of course, Project 440. I'm the founder and vision advisor of a nonprofit organization called Project 440, and we use music as a tool to teach young people, high school students, the life skills needed to thrive. So music is the lens, we use young people's passion to develop, yeah, the skills and competencies needed to function in this crazy world that we live in. I'm really happy to be here. My affiliation with ASTA goes back to being serving on the board. I was a board member with ASTA and my association with Suzuki is listening and hearing Suzuki music through the house all the time.

Yumi Kendall:

All the time.

Joseph Conyers:

I have an older brother and twin sister, violin and cello, and they were both Suzuki, and there was no Suzuki bass at that time because I'm ancient. But, um, uh, yeah, so Suzuki, I feel like, has always been a part of my life.

Yumi Kendall:

Vijay?

Vijay Gupta:

Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Vijay Gupta. I try to play the violin on a daily basis. I am the founder and artistic director of an organization called Street Symphony, which is based in Los Angeles, which makes music for and with people in re-entry from experiences of incarceration, addiction, and homelessness. For 12 years, I was a member of the first violin section of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. And I’m very lucky to share my work on a national and international scale as a speaker and I'm it's kind of surreal to say this publicly now but next year I'll be having a book published by Hachette in New York which I'm very excited about which will be a story about how I started – well wait until the book comes out – which will be the story of how I started Street Symphony and my journey through music and eventually leaving the LA Philharmonic to dedicate my time, full time to that musical conversation. And I'm just so delighted to be here with my colleagues today.

Joseph Conyers:

Season one, episode two of Tacet No More.

Vijay Gupta:

Yes, yes.

Joseph Conyers:

Features Vijay Gupta.

Vijay Gupta:

Very honored to be here.

Joseph Conyers:

It's a fantastic episode. I highly, highly recommend it. It's really, really..

Vijay Gupta:

It was a lot of fun.

Yumi Kendall:

And we're so glad to share the stage with you again and share the space with all of you. I'm Yumi Kendall. I play the cello. I'm the assistant principal cello of the Philadelphia Orchestra. This is my 20th, 20th season. And I'm also a long time Suzuki kid. My American grandfather, actually, John Kendall, introduced the Suzuki method to the Americas back in the 60s. And so I had no choice but to start cello because that's what everybody did. Because don't all families play string quartets at the holidays with like the French horn subbing in for the viola part? Or sing alongs with the neighbors around and singing Messiah and everybody singing and playing a different part. So music was a part of our lives growing up and it is a part of my inherent belief in the human experience that we all share music as part of being a human being and that is what connects us and so the very essence I remember my first teacher training ECE, Every Child Can, and it's all about reaching our, and striving for our potential as humans. And that is kind of where we are with our thinking. And should we go into One Good Thing? Okay, we would invite you to think about what your one good thing might be. We did this, Rebecca, in our sectional, right? One Good Thing. So actually, we were talking about this earlier, and we all shared the same, One Good Thing.

Joseph Conyers:

Being together. These are lovely people, and I love spending time with these lovely people because we always have fantastic conversations, and it could go on and on and on, and then we have to go our separate ways, and then we get back together, and then we'll go on and on and on.

Vijay Gupta:

And we just pick up from exactly where we left off. And the conversation is just as deep, if not deeper, than it was the last time that we stopped talking. And we're so, we're lucky enough to be so busy in our lives that we've got like these three hours once every six months. It's like a lunar eclipse or something like that. And this is just like a cosmic moment to be able to spend time together, but then to also be with you is just such a good thing.

Yumi Kendall:

That is our One Good Thing is sharing this space together. We treasure it and we're grateful for it. Would anybody, one of you like to share something that is special or meaningful? You saw a beautiful flower. We're also here together here. Would anybody like to share something? Yes.

Audience Guest 1:

Is this right? Okay. I was asked to do this recently in another meeting and so it's fresh in my mind what I was thinking of. But I was recently asked to take a student who had been kicked out of our school a couple of times for bad behavior. And they're like, well, I'll just give her a try. You know, it's gonna be a problem. She came in and she was just so excited. She has a lot of issues, but you know, she kept lunging for the cello and she just wanted to play so badly and so we were playing and she doesn't have great speech skills, but she said to her mom, cello, happy face. And that made my year.

Yumi Kendall:

That is the quote for the day for me, cello, happy face. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing, yes.

Audience Guest 2:

Just recently, there's this thing called for schools for school orchestra and band and choir called soul and ensemble and recently after a lot of work my school my class actually we got a perfect score and I was really glad about that because we had been struggling like literally 20 minutes before we actually went on stage

Yumi Kendall:

Congratulations!

Joseph Conyers:

Congratulations, that’s great.

Yumi Kendall:

And maybe we'll have time for another one, and then we'll go into our…

Audience Guest 3:

My daughter's here, and she's an orchestra bass. And she reconnected me with my sister.

Yumi Kendall:

Oh, my goodness.

Vijay Gupta:

Amazing. Thank you. Wow. Beautiful.

Audience Guest 4:

Just getting to like perform here because my orchestra has been like Waiting to get to come here for a long time. So being able to finally perform here. It's really nice

Yumi Kendall:

Wonderful. Thank you all so much for sharing these. So one thing about five, six years ago, I went back to grad school for a master's in applied positive psychology, which is the science of wellbeing, what makes us flourish. And one of the things we found out about positive discussions and positive framing, thinking about what's good or what's meaningful or what we're grateful for, such as this One Good Thing exercise, it helps create a space of vulnerability and trust and that is one of the goals of our podcast, because when we start to talk about the things that we talk about on the podcast, which can be difficult and challenging, because tacet no more, they're often not talked about. Feeling open and feeling trusted and feeling seen, all of these things are data-backed from social science of well-being. And it helps create a space of safety that we would like to invite you into the conversation and to invite us to listen and to help create a pathway for the larger industry picture that we're talking about, from our lens of the orchestra world through our interaction with every human being possible, for all of our stories to be heard. So that is why we do this exercise called One Good Thing, and we invite you to actually try integrating this into your daily life with somebody else that you wanna share that with, and it kind of reframes your mind to look to the positive and to strive to look up and out and towards the light, if you will. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. And should we go into, well, where we are with our thoughts these days? Because we'd also like to hear from you about your questions. How many of you have any questions for us or that you'd things you'd like to hear discussed? Any thoughts so far? So we'll get the wheels rolling and maybe, Vijay.

Vijay Gupta:

Sure, I'm happy to.

Yumi Kendall:

Tell us something – what's on your mind these days?

Vijay Gupta:

Well, you know, one of the things that we've been talking about so much on a kind of social level is this term trauma, you know, and that so often that we're reacting to or responding to pain in our lives. And the place where I work in downtown Los Angeles, I'm often surrounded by people who can be defined by the stories of past traumas. You know, so often the stigma of homelessness or incarceration or poverty or addiction, a human being can become defined and diminished by that story. And one of the things that I'm thinking about is how do we heal from trauma? What does it mean to heal? And that so often we think about healing, like you heal a cut or you heal a broken bone and that after you've healed, you're okay again. But the truth is that even our body still bears a scar from a past wound. When a bone breaks, what actually happens is that the body creates an inflammatory response where the place where the bone was broken, it actually is stronger. It becomes a kind of super bone, right? So we never heal backwards, we always heal forwards. So the question to us is what are we healing towards? And I think about healing as a new story. Right? What's the new story that we can tell about ourselves? And there's an amazing medical ethicist named Arthur Frank, who wrote a book in the mid 1990s called The Wounded Healer. And, excuse me, that's a different book by Philip Nguyen. The Wounded Storyteller. Wounded Healer is amazing. But the Wounded Storyteller and the idea that one actually needs to tell their story of healing to another person. As that story is received there's a relationship created, right? Stories create relationships. So one of the things that I'm thinking about for us in our world is how do we as artists, which really is how do we as storytellers tell the story of our healing towards a new identity, towards a new sense of agency and who we are. How do we create who we are as opposed to living in somebody else's story? So I'll kind of pause with that, but we're being told constantly to live in somebody else's story. The story of a teacher, the story of a boss, the story of a parent. Love them, but is that your story? And so often we're also living in the story of the algorithm, which is a story that's determined by somebody else and tells us what to buy, what to care about, what hashtags to post. So I'll kind of pause with that rich idea of what story are you healing towards?

Yumi Kendall:

And Vijay, you actually had parents who wanted you to do something other than music. And I don't know if there's anybody in here who can relate to that feeling of tension. For some of you, you may have career directions that you think they're thinking of, and there may be other people who care about you who want other things. So that might be something that also we can connect to.

Vijay Gupta:

Absolutely, well, you know, both of my parents were immigrants from Bengal, from India. And I was a Suzuki kid growing up, and my parents drove me to Blessin's first near home, and then sometimes traversing hundreds of miles in a week in Upstate New York to take me to my lessons. And then there came a time where my parents basically said, no you're gonna be a doctor. And you know I realized that for them that decision came out of a place of fear, right? Because they saw how difficult it is for us to live fruitful, meaningful lives as paid artists. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do. And what I am so grateful for now is actually having pursued a life that taught me how to talk to scientists, that taught me how to sort of think as an entrepreneur. Because as an artist, I am all of those things now. As an artist, what I'm seeking is to find a wholeness and an integration of all these skills and stories that were kind of placed upon my shoulders. But ultimately, the bravest thing to say was, this is my life, this is my story, and I have to live it on my terms, even if I don't know what the result looks like. Right, because I think if we would have told any of us sitting in the room today, that you could make a life 10 years ago by being an Instagram influencer or by being a YouTuber. We would have laughed you out of the room, right? And yet that is a very real living now that we can make today as a creator. And I think creators have always created a way to make a living, right? So I think, again, that kind of ties back to how do we take the stories that other people place upon us and use those opportunities and lenses and mirrors to find our own reflection.

Yumi Kendall:

Wow, a lot there. I have a question for our audience. I want to hear from you. I wanted, well we want to hear from all of you. About what I'm thinking. What's on your mind? I also wanted to know if there are folks in the audience who are at a point in their lives where they might be going through what Vijay went through with his parents about trying to figure out what to quote unquote do. Are any of you at that point and you're starting to think about sort of what career means? I see some of those hands, okay, so this is very helpful for us. Yeah, well, actually, this is a great segue. I don't know if you wanna talk about that because what the career even means in redefining some of that idea.

Joseph Conyers:

Sure, I mean, I feel like a complete failure and disappointment to my parents because my mom still asks me about getting my master's degree, which I don't have. Maybe one day, one day I'll work on it. But, no, but I mean, you're absolutely right. That is something that can weigh on us heavily. And the best thing I can say is following Vijay's advice, which is like, we ultimately, and this is why I tell my students as a teacher, you are ultimately your own player when you perform. Your parents can help you, your teachers can help you, a lot of people can help you, but you're the one who is on the stage and has to convince the audience of what you're trying to convey. So with that same confidence that you might go in to play a concerto or play a performance piece or do a performance with a symphony, whatever that is, you can actually look at your life that way because ultimately you're the one who has to live it. And I tell my high school students this all the time, life is about choices. It really is. And I mean, at one point, I mean, when I was in school, I didn't know what the future held. I mean, if I did, I would've, I would probably would've slept a lot more and practiced a little bit less. But, if you know these things, right? But you don't know. So what you, what you, what I ended up doing was, I had to make a choice. And y'all, this is, I mean, well, wait, I didn't plan on going on this in this direction.

Yumi Kendall:

Go for it.

Joseph Conyers:

But it's one of those things like I when I was in school I just decided that I'm willing to do this because I love it so much and not make any money doing it because it wasn't promised to me but that was a choice I mean other people are not okay with that kind of choice because they like to live in a place that has four bedrooms three and a half baths and overlooks the city that they live in in which case teaching private lessons or whatever, whatever, won't cover the bill to do that. But that's a choice. While others, particularly after the pandemic, we have many of our colleagues who have gone into things like coding. And they realize that's something they enjoy doing and they love music, but they enjoy doing that and they've made their life that. And that's okay. It's okay. I'm here to tell you, it's okay. Because the thing about our business and our industry is oftentimes we're always told what's not OK. This is wrong. You can't do this. Why not? Become the first billion dollar YouTube violin player, if that's what it is. So we have choices. That, however, was not the thing that's been on my mind. But you got it. You got me thinking and then you got me going. So the thing that's been on my mind recently is particularly with all the turmoil that's going in the world, y'all I like, I'm not a puzzle person. Give me a crossword puzzle. I'm not, nope, not me. I'm not the other little games people play they have so much fun doing, not me. I like looking at society and figuring out what are the solutions there. For some reason, that just gives me some weird kind of high. And recently, it's just been hard, because there is so much turmoil, there's so much dissonance, there's so much, and I just want to make it better. And I will look at every nook and cranny of this situation. I mean, everything from what can I do as a citizen of this earth, as a citizen of this country, and as a citizen in my organization, even at The Philadelphia Orchestra. Because we would like to think that all these institutions are perfect. They are not. And the question is, what can I do to make it better? Actively. Not sitting in, we were having a conversation earlier, not sitting in my privilege of not having to worry about these things, because to me, that is a privilege. But instead, actively looking for a solution. And what does that look like? Is it with my bass in my hand? Is it with the privilege I have as my position in the orchestra? What is that? But that's what's been on my mind.

Yumi Kendall:

That's a lot. And that's just like today at two.

Joseph Conyers:

That's right.

Yumi Kendall:

Because we also have a plane ride back to Philly and I don't know if we're sitting next to each other but that could be a whole other thing to hear too about everything we get to take away from being sponges, like going to seminars and presentations here for me as an attendee as well. For me, what's been on my mind lately, and we talked about this on Wednesday, purpose and meaning, and constantly asking myself my purpose and my meaning. And right now, that is reminding myself every human being has music as part of our lived experience. From our earliest pre-homo sapiens, Neanderthal days, like before we were the species we are now, we even had music with rhythm, with drumbeats, with communication across the long vast desert. We had ways of communicating with other people about messages, about our own experience, about what was happening. And music is just part of our lives as humans, every human, whether that's through dance and moving our bodies or through listening or through playing music or singing it or humming or singing in the shower while you're washing it, you know, we all have different interactions with music and engagement with music. And so when I think about purpose and meaning that whatever I'm doing, whether it's teaching, whether it's facilitating, being an administrator or a facilitator for other people to access and have musical experiences, whether it's being a parent or having a chosen family that then also facilitates or helps another child with their musical experiences, whether it's me performing as a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra or playing a duet or playing a trio. We haven't done that yet. But whatever, whether it's through performing, but everything that I do is to the end of opening doors of musical opportunity for all human beings. It's like the Suzuki message that I've been able to live my whole life and trying to offer that to others. And so that kind of core identity in a way, that core sense of purpose, gives them meaning to all of these avenues and different expressions of that core. So for when I'm thinking about some of you who might be thinking about your careers or your callings and all the different ways that those things can manifest and your own contributions to making the world a better place. Be it from stage, be it from creating community through music. What those kinds of interactions can be and keep evolving. Like I went to grad school well into my, I was 11, 12 years into my Philadelphia Orchestra career. I didn't have to go to grad school for this non-music thing, but I wanted to because that was my way of trying to make things better and open doors. So I'll pause there and invite any reactions or thoughts. Oh, Joe, we have, oh, Vijay, okay, we have stuff.

Joseph Conyers:

And all I was gonna say was when you have discovered that, then no matter what it is that you're doing, if it's giving you purpose, then you have found happiness and that is your life. Because happiness is not defined by what others might think of whatever, but happiness is, again, it's your life. And that's the point I was trying to make with, I was just trying to make myself clear.

Yumi Kendall:

You were crystal clear.

Joseph Conyers:

As far as decisions we make because, and then, yeah, because regardless of where I ended up, I was going to be happy because I was doing what gave me joy.

Vijay Gupta:

I just wanted to respond with one thing that I think I'm only realizing right now is, you know, Joe, as you're talking about finding the nooks and crannies to make things better and Yumi, you're saying the same thing of make a thing better. I think that this constant search for improvement, what Dr. Suzuki called, you know, essentially is the Zen practice of Kaizen, right? Getting continually better is a deeply artistic practice. Like, we as musicians live this every single day. And I think that we are all idealists in a way, right? Because we all in our own way worship the ideal of that expression, right? Which is temporal and fleeting and beautiful beyond imagination such that we're willing to sacrifice the four bedroom, three bathroom, beautiful view house because we don't need that to experience the beauty or express the beauty that's here. And what we're looking for and what we're trying to create is the bridge between whatever world is out there and the vast ecosystem that exists in here, right, and to transmit that ideal, to connect and make those ideals resonate across whatever that stretched string is between us, right, between all of us in this room. So, yeah, really curious to hear how that's landing with you all and perhaps we can kind of dive into a bit of that conversation.

Yumi Kendall:

Yeah, are there any thoughts or reactions or questions?

Joseph Conyers:

Well, so the question was how can we support our kind of our foundational teachers, particularly in a society where it seems like teachers and education is not necessarily given its due. What can we do to raise the profile, the visibility and celebrate those who allow us to be where we are today.

Yumi Kendall:

Suzuki Alumni Project.

Joseph Conyers:

Well, do you want to talk about.

Yumi Kendall:

Well, that was one answer that I had to that, that was starting the Suzuki Alumni Project as a Suzuki quote-unquote alum and I felt like it was the role of those who've been through Suzuki education to express their gratitude for and shout from the rooftops our gratitude for our specifically our Suzuki teachers not for the brick-and-mortar sort of conservatories where everybody's already good when they get in but for having the the gratitude for an expressed you know shout out really championing that our teachers believed in us before I sounded good at all. You don't even, I don't even make a sound on the, cardboard or cheerio box or whatever. So that was one response I personally had to that essential question. And I think there's a more global response to that too, which is kind of a cultural one in the US, which is about education generally as well. And not just Suzuki teachers, all music teachers who are the foundational teachers as you described. And that yeah, so Suzuki alumni project was my personal response to for me, but Joe and Vijay…

Joseph Conyers:

No I so I my mother taught for over 30 years in Savannah public schools and Teachers are near and dear to my heart in that way I One of the things that we we talked about discussing even on the podcast is something that I saw, particularly when I was in college was almost a divide between performers and educators. Everyone plays a role in this matrix and how things work. And I would love to see organizations even like my own in the Philadelphia Orchestra figure out a way to more actively engage with the teaching community to bring all these facets of, and these components of education together. So all that to say, I think it would be a tremendous opportunity for a lot of these performing arts organizations to embrace those who allow for those performing arts organizations in many ways to even exist.

Vijay Gupta:

You know, one thing that's kind of striking me is that so often we hold our foundational teachers at odds with our professional standards. And I think that there's a loss there. Because when I think about my foundational teachers, so often the lessons that I learned from them have nothing to do with violin playing at all, but so much more about how they made me feel. And I told this story during my keynote of I had a rather brutal and acerbic teacher who was one of my first Suzuki teachers. But the way that I remembered her lessons was when I started teaching or engaging communities who had never heard a violin play live in their lives. And I realized what I had learned from her because I became her. I was like cavorting around and saying, cutting things that I was wondering later on if that was PC or not to say, but she just kind of, she kind of possessed me, right? And I think that's what so often our great teachers do that we don't even realize that it wasn't about where we put our fingers, it's about where we put our attention. You know, and in a strange way, I also wonder, like we need to have the platforms to celebrate. I completely agree with you, Joe, in that. And I also wonder if we have to create those platforms ourselves by throwing ourselves in the deep end, you know, and creating, you know, the frameworks to realize how difficult it is to actually teach. One of the best ways to celebrate our teachers is to teach ourselves. Right? And realize how freaking hard it is to do. You know, it's incredibly humbling to do that. So I would just kind of add that to this place, to this conversation. I mean, now I'm realizing that so many of my teachers are people who society ignores. People who have gone through the, you know, recovery from alcoholism and addiction. You know, and these are people who, these are teachers I wasn't even looking for. And yet, their teachings were such foundational practices. Back to this point too, where I began to realize the foundational practices of my first teachers when I was in Skid Row, when I was least expecting it. So one of the other ways that we can celebrate our teachers is by remaining as curious as possible, which kind of goes back to the idealism conversation. Because so often, our idealism gets shut down, our curiosity gets shut down, and we forget those people who sparked that curiosity.

Yumi Kendall:

And we could just go on

Vijay Gupta:

Let’s do it!

Yumi Kendall:

Yes, yes, absolutely. Oh, it makes me think about what teacher means too, because teaching is really about, like you said, your teachers are now you’re…right, and it's about that relationship with, your own relationship with curiosity, with humility, and knowing that I don't know everything, so I want to keep, I want to learn, I want to strive the artistic idealism for that striving. But that anybody can become a teacher if there's the partnership there. It's about that, that space in that shared community, that shared space with a mentor mentee and asking the questions that need to be asked. Hashtag Tacet No More.

Joseph Conyers:

Thank you so much for that question. Thank you. Anyone else?

Yumi Kendall:

Thank you for that. I'll try to reframe that. In a point in life of transition, how does one address the possibly discouraging and challenging decisions and also the worlds that you're seeing and sort of going into, how do we address those questions in that transition phase and I guess beyond the transition phase too. I'll answer that very briefly by saying I'm still addressing, like I'm not, like I think of life as a transition, birth to death, I'm in the life of the transition of life. And actually one of the reasons we started Tacet No More is because we felt that we needed to create a space to be asking questions, because we didn't see that existing yet. And we also felt and maybe still feel frustrated in specific ways. I feel deep gratitude for my job. I love my orchestra. I love what I do. I love getting to teach. And yet there are still things and questions to be asked. So that's why I reframe the question personally to life transition and those challenges. So Tacet No More is a response to that same feeling. I think I share, I personally, I think we share that.

Vijay Gupta:

Yeah. Well, I mean. There was a time about seven or eight years ago, that I was running my nonprofit full-time. I had an incredible team of people who were helping me out of the deep end. I didn't even know how deep it was. And so often, I was backstage at Walt Disney Concert Hall in my tuxedo tails writing, teaching myself how to write grants for the California Arts Council or National Endowment for the Arts. And then going out and playing a Mahler Symphony with Dudamel and then coming backstage during intermission and finishing the grant or staying up until two or three o'clock in the morning. And it's linked to this piece of you create the alternative. But the feeling that I was so unwilling to face was that that job for me in the orchestra was a quote dream job. It was somebody else's dream. And I wish I had been brave enough to understand that I was living out somebody else's story. Earlier much earlier. You don't have to live out a dream if it's not yours You know, but I think then the question that was the most difficult one for me to own was not where do I lack? But rather what are my gifts? So often we define ourselves by our lack, and we do not own the gifts and skills that we have, even if those gifts and skills are just glimmers and shimmers, right? This is where I had to find amazing friends and colleagues and mentors and people who held up a mirror to me and said, this is what you're good at, and this is where you're copping out. Right? And there was a point where I had to realize that if I want to live into the fullness of my greatest artistic gifts, it means that I have to make a decision. You know, and I just want to, I'm a bit of an etymology nut. The word decide, the C-I-D-E of side, of decide, is the same root as homicide, suicide, fratricide. It means to kill something. Right? And I don't mean to get morbid here, but it does mean that one has to say no to something. Focus means saying no. And so often, no, and the clarity of one's no is a kind of kindness. It's a real kindness, and it's often a kindness to yourself, meaning, no, I'm not gonna spend the next 45 minutes on Instagram. I'm gonna journal instead. Or I'm gonna go for a walk instead. So these practices, and I say that word very consciously, these practices are decisions. Trauma, compassion, social justice, these have become calcified rote hashtags. We need to do so much better than hashtags. We need to adopt practices. Adopt practices, not hashtags. And practices, the same way that Dr. Suzuki was talking about it, are these daily incremental atomic habits of practice that we can enact into the world.

Joseph Conyers:

I'll only, because there's hardly much to be said after that, except for I've got two things. One, I'm going to emphasize the create piece. And I want all those who lead institutions to cover their ears for a second, because I might say something that might hurt some people's feelings. A lot of these institutions aren't getting musicians ready or giving them the skill set to create. They are giving you, they're saying, literally, I have a degree that says I play the bass, and that's basically all they're gonna cover. Like, he knows where the G string is, he can play fourth finger, like, he knows what an arpeggio is.

Vijay Gupta:

If only you had gotten that masters, Joe. I mean, seriously.

Joseph Conyers:

I've been helping, yeah. But literally, and that's all the schools I feel responsible for. Does that make sense? So you actually have to, one, in your instance, since you're out of school, lean into your own creativity and what your potential is to do something that doesn't possibly exist or aligns with your values so it's exactly what you wanna do versus what the world wants you to do. And for those of you who are in school, a few things. One, challenge your institutions to give you and provide you pathways to actually create, to do stuff outside of the box, to work with other disciplines. The school of music should be working with the engineering school, or the medicine, literally, just think outside the box so that when you graduate, you have a toolkit of things to possibly use out in the real world. But if you're waiting, like literally, if you think that degree is gonna answer all your problems, yeah. It could be difficult. So, learn to create, demand that your schools provide opportunities for you to create amongst yourselves and in your education.

Yumi Kendall:

Or go rogue and do it yourself. That's right. Are there any other last questions or? We have a half hand.

Audience Guest 5:

I just want to thank you for bringing the point across again about your sense of identity, your core values, and that you live those out. Because no one else can live them for you. You have to live them out yourself. And then it's palpable. Your happiness is, it is a physical thing, but people see it and hear it and feel it from you. So live it. I recently had a couple people in the tech field come to me and they said, we wish we were you. These are people making millions of dollars, and I am not anywhere near that. And they said, we wish we were you. And I said, why? They said, because you live what you believe, and you share it with the world. We can all do this. So thank you for pointing that out and bringing it to us.

Yumi Kendall:

Yes.

Joseph Conyers:

Thank you.

Vijay Gupta:

There's something that is kind of triggering in my mind as you say that. Dr. Suzuki was called the Sensei, and a colleague of mine who plays in my piano trio, Yoshi Masuda, he and I were talking after one of the Street Symphony performances in a women's prison, and we played the Ravel duo for cello and violin. The third movement of the Ravel duo starts with, it's a canon, but it starts with four bars from the cello and then four bars from the violin playing the exact same music. And we talked about this metaphor of what the word sensei actually means, which means a head on the road. So someone who has just walked the steps ahead of you, right? And that the sensei may not even know that they are a sensei, right? Which talks about the sort of unwitting teacher, the unwittingly, you know, the person who's teaching without realizing that they're teaching. But also the fact that this is someone who's not necessarily the expert that has all the solutions, but rather someone who can show you where the boulders and bumps are on the road ahead of you, right? So I know that we sit here in awe of our teachers. And that we're also constantly asked this question of like, what do I do with my life? What's my passion? What's my purpose? And sometimes all we can do is look at the road and take the next step, right? And we can become paralyzed by analysis. We can become paralyzed by how the world tells us we should be. But I think what we are so lucky to embody is taking the next step. Pick up the instrument and leave the world a better place.

Yumi Kendall:

Hear, hear.

Joseph Conyers:

Thank you so much for this time. I would like to thank Vijay for joining us on this episode.

Vijay Gupta:

Thank you for having me. And thank you to Tacet No More for creating such a gorgeous platform for us to speak up I mean, I love this name because Tacet No More means you're come on, let's go, you know.

Yumi Kendall:

You have a voice.

Joseph Conyers:

Thank you and thank you to ASTA and Suzuki for hosting us we're so happy to be here and as our I guess as our parting words, know thy purpose. Know thy purpose and live in your own truth and make the world a better place. That pretty much…

Yumi Kendall:

Sums it up. Thank you all so much. Have a great afternoon.

Joseph Conyers:

Take care, thank you.

Joseph Conyers:

Thanks for listening. Let's stay in touch. Email us your comments and suggestions to info@tacetnomore.com.

Yumi Kendall:

And go to tacetnomore.com to sign up for email updates from us.

Joseph Conyers:

Follow us and message us on Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter, at tacetnomore.

Yumi Kendall:

While you're there, we invite you to post your One Good Thing using the hashtag #OneGoodThingTNM. And we'll share your joy with our followers.

Joseph Conyers:

Tacet No More is produced by me Joseph Conyers, Yumi Kendall, Andrew Mellor, Lindsay Sheridan, and Brenda Hernandez-Jaimes of Ellas Media.

Yumi Kendall:

Any views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect any entities with which they are associated.

Joseph Conyers:

In our next episode…